CHENGDU, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- The athleticism on show at the Big Air Shougang has become one of the main focuses of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, with the women's freeski big air champion Gu Ailing and the men's snowboard big air gold winner Su Yiming giving stunning performances on the slopes.
In Chengdu, the capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province, a 43-meter-high and 112-meter-long snowless big air venue is also drawing attention from winter sports fans as the training facility for China's Olympians, including Gu and Su.
The facility was built using home-grown innovations in dry ski technology to meet the training requirements for big air sports, attracting Olympians to prepare themselves for the Games, said Zhang Wei, who is in charge of a local dry ski resort.
Dry ski technology has its roots in 1950s Britain. It mimics snow so that people can ski or snowboard at room temperature using artificial materials such as plastics.
The surfaces of earlier dry ski slopes used plastic mat tiles that resembled standing brushes or combs, and users could be easily injured on the upward-facing plastic spikes if they fell over.
Jian Feng, a ski enthusiast from Sichuan who had long been annoyed by the issues with such artificial slopes, began to innovate a new version almost a decade ago.
To begin, he changed the shape of the upward spikes by fixing soybean-like beads to their peaks so that they resembled needle mushrooms, a popular delicacy in Sichuan hotpot. The beads were able to maintain the smooth surface of the slope without hurting anyone who fell on them.
Feng's new version also used composite materials to optimize the elasticity of the plastic mat, and changed the height of the plastic spikes. The needle-mushroom spikes are arranged at intervals and at different heights to form layers, which can absorb the impact from skis or a snowboard and bounce back -- almost like real snow.
Zhang said that this new dry ski mat was granted a Chinese patent in 2012, and is now used by over 40 domestic ski resorts and has been exported to the United States, Austria, Canada, Sweden, Britain and Russia.
The snowless big air slope at the Chengdu facility is also equipped with a redesigned cushion pad. Conventional pads at the ends of dry ski slopes are inflated with air to protect athletes when they fall. But they often get stuck in these pads, unable to make subsequent movements.
The new cushion pad, filled with plastic straws, can absorb the impact of the athletes and support them as they stand steadily to complete touch-down and other necessary movements, just as they would hope to do in real competitions.
Other improvements to this dry ski slope include a magic carpet lift to bring athletes and their gear to the top of the slope, saving time and energy that would be spent climbing up from the ground.
Zhang said that Gu Ailing trained there for about five hours a day over five days in late January this year, just days before the opening of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.
"Supported by technological innovation, athletes can explore new movements and challenge their limits in all seasons, and show their best skills to the world," he said. ■
